“Why has George sent you here?” she asked.
Sato took another step backward, this time bumping into the stone wall across from the woman. “How . . . how do you know—”
“Stop acting the fool, young man. I know everything. I’m Reginald Chu, and I find it very interesting that you’ve come here, to this strange place, with a syringe in your hand. Why?”
Sato pulled his right hand from behind his back, looking down at it as if ashamed. He didn’t know which felt worse right then—his head or his stomach. “I don’t understand. What do you mean you’re Reginald Chu?”
“I think I’m the one who doesn’t understand,” Renee replied. “George seems to know so much about my project, yet here you stand, without the slightest clue of the danger you are in. How can you trust such a leader?”
“Nothing you say makes sense.”
“Everything I say makes sense.” Renee crossed the short span of the tunnel, stopping directly in front of Sato. “Once I have my partner, once Dark Infinity is fully functional, you’ll understand. The Realities are about to have a great change, my friend.”
Sato swallowed, trying to build his courage. “You’re crazy, lady. You think Reginald Chu is controlling you somehow. Don’t you see how crazy that is? You need help.”
“I told you,” Renee said with a sneer. “We’re not crazy until he leaves our heads.”
“My boss—he thinks he can find a cure for you. If you’ll just let me . . .” He held the syringe up, raising his eyebrows in question.
“A cure?” Renee backed off two steps, shaking her head. “A cure? Does that man think I’m a toady research assistant at some under-funded university? He thinks he’s going to stop me with a cure? He’ll sooner cure cancer, Parkinson’s, diabetes, and regenerate amputated limbs before he’ll stop Dark Infinity.”
Confusion swarmed like a pack of bees inside Sato’s head. The lady really and truly thought she was Reginald Chu. And it worried Sato that he was sliding toward that same belief as well. “What is Dark Infinity?”
Renee folded her arms. “As they say in your Reality, that’s on a need-to-know basis and you don’t need to know. A cure. Ha.” She barked a laugh.
“If you’re so confident, why not give me a blood sample? And then I’ll leave.”
Renee held out her hand to him. “Come with me,” she said. “I want to give you a taste of what Dark Infinity will become. And then I want you to go back and report it to your buffoon of a leader. All the Realitant do-gooders can then have fun dreading the day I take over their lives.”
Sato shook his head. “Give me a sample first. Then I’ll go.”
Renee stared at him for a long minute, her blue eyes seeming to glow. “You’re brave for someone so young. Maybe you should have been included in my special trials. Of course, I need a lot more than bravery—too bad you’re not more like your friend Atticus Higginbottom.”
Sato almost fell to the ground at the mention of Tick. This lady had no way, absolutely no way of knowing anything about Tick or the strange ability he’d displayed in the Thirteenth Reality. “How do you know about him?”
“Come with me.” She beckoned again with her hand.
“The sample first.” Sato wiped sweat from his brow, thinking too late how much weakness the action probably showed. “You said yourself there’s no way George can find a cure.”
“Yes, I did say that. But I’m not an idiot—I won’t take chances. This isn’t some lame movie from your Hollywood.”
Sato steeled his nerves. “I’m not going anywhere until you give me a blood sample. You may think you have Reginald Chu inside your head, but I bet he won’t be much help in a wrestling match between us.”
Renee laughed, such a pleasant sound in the otherwise dreary place that it disturbed Sato.
“A compromise, then,” she said. Or Chu said. “I’ll give you your sample, but you let me carry the vial until we’re done. I want—no, I need you to report back to George what you see here today.”
“No way,” Sato said. “I’m not giving you the vial.”
Renee’s face creased into a scowl so frightening that Sato would have melted into the stone at his back if he could have. “You tire me, boy. Do you really think I’m going to let you leave here alive with a sample of my blood? You’ll be signing your own death warrant.”
Sato felt his own blood chill. George will get me out, he thought. George will get me out.
“I’ll take my chances,” he said. “Give me your blood and I’ll go with you.”
Renee stuck her arm out. “Do it, then.”
Sato stepped forward and grabbed her thin arm, leaning over to look at the soft skin in the bend of her elbow. A big vein pulsed, purple in the faint light.
“This might hurt,” he said, not sure why he showed any compassion. “I’ve never done this before.”